Unwound and Ready for Some Cuckoo Time

By ROBIN POGREBIN

Published: April 5, 2001

There are moments in the Broadway production of ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' when Gary Sinise seems like a loose cannon, a muscular bundle of combustible energy.

He makes it look easy, of course, as if the character of Randle P. McMurphy -- a man who acts crazy enough to get himself condemned to a mental institution instead of being sent to prison -- is one he's been carrying around inside him for some time.

But after portraying tightly wound characters in films like Brian De Palma's ''Snake Eyes'' and Stephen King's ''The Stand'' and restrained ones like Harry Truman in the HBO film ''Truman,'' said Mr. Sinise, 46, the abandon necessary for the part of McMurphy took conscious effort.

''It's been a long time since I've played somebody as free and open as McMurphy is,'' said Mr. Sinise, wearing a black T-shirt and khakis as he brewed tea in his dressing room. ''He's a broad character, he's a flamboyant character, he's funny. He's a bighearted con man and a cowboy.''

Mr. Sinise said the director, his good friend Terry Kinney, urged him to get back to a part of his acting he hadn't explored in a while. ''It took a little bit to shed that reliance on a certain style,'' Mr. Sinise said, '' to get wild.''

By now, having played McMurphy in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theater Company -- which he founded at age 18 with Mr. Kinney and Jeff Perry -- and in London, Mr. Sinise is used to the part. (The show opens on Broadway on Sunday for a run through June 17 at the Royale Theater.)

The role is one he long wanted to play, after seeing Mr. Kinney in a college production and Jack Nicholson in the movie version, and reading the Ken Kesey novel on which Dale Wasserman based the play.

''To me it's a great yarn,'' Mr. Sinise said. ''It's a great old story that anyone who's fragile in any area can identify with.''

''People are constantly wrestling with their own self-esteem issues,'' he continued. ''And these characters learn to stand up for themselves.''

The story follows McMurphy as he challenges the repressive rules inside the mental institution, fights for a heart-rending band of fellow patients and ultimately is forced to surrender.

The weight is now more evenly distributed among strong ensemble members than it has been in past productions. Mr. Sinise said that was deliberate. ''Even though McMurphy is the center of the story -- he's definitely the motor that drives the machine -- in our production, he gives way to the other characters so their stories can be told as well.''

Mr. Wasserman, the playwright, calls Mr. Sinise's portrayal ''the most convincing I've every seen.'' Other actors who played McMurphy -- including Mr. Nicholson and Kirk Douglas, who performed it in the first Broadway production in 1963 -- have exaggerated the character's heroic qualities, Mr. Wasserman said. ''The tendency is to play it over the top -- too large, folkloric and in a certain curious way, to dehumanize it,'' he explained in a telephone interview from his home in Arizona.

Mr. Sinise allows for more complexity, the playwright said. ''He's not afraid to be equivocal,'' Mr. Wasserman said. ''One doesn't really know about this character -- is he Christ or is he a con man? One of the things I like in Gary's performance is, that is what he plays. It's more subtle than to simply be the big bully boy.''

Mr. Sinise described the role as exhilarating but draining. ''He comes onstage screaming and goes off kicking -- he doesn't stop,'' Mr. Sinise said. ''He is a physically and vocally challenging part to do night after night. I'm sweating like a pig when I get offstage.''

No, Mr. Sinise does not worry about being compared with Mr. Nicholson. Actors who play Hamlet get compared with Olivier, he said; actors who play Tom Joad (''The Grapes of Wrath'') to Henry Fonda.

''As familiar as I am with the movie and as big a fan as I am of the movie, once I started working on the play, I did my own thing,'' Mr. Sinise said. ''I'm a different actor. I do a different thing.''

It has been several years since Mr. Sinise has been onstage; his last theater performance was as Stanley Kowalski in the 50th-anniversary production of ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' in 1997 at Steppenwolf. The last time Mr. Sinise was on Broadway was in ''The Grapes of Wrath,'' another Steppenwolf production, which brought him a Tony Award nomination in 1990.

He had missed the stage, he said, and it feels good to be back. ''I did nothing but stage till 10 years ago, when I started doing movies,'' he said. ''I'm very at home with it and have never kind of lost that. But I don't make my living at it anymore.''

The actor said he likes having control over his performance, something he gets more of in the theater than in film, where the director has tighter hold of the reins. Nevertheless, Mr. Sinise said he would like to do more in the movies. Steppenwolf plans to start producing its own films and television shows, though Mr. Sinise said that the details had not yet been determined.

Mr. Sinise, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Moira Harris (also of Steppenwolf), and their three young children, is a devoted father, which makes him selective about which projects will keep him away from his family.

''I'm not the kind of actor you see in four movies every year,'' he said. ''I pick and choose, and sometimes that works out really well and sometimes it doesn't.''

''I'd much rather be a dad,'' he added, ''than work on a bad movie for the money.''

Yes, there are times when Mr. Sinise would like to rank with A-list actors like Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks so he would be offered better movies more often. But he works fairly steadily, and that, he said, is something to be grateful for. ''It's frustrating at every level for any actor, no matter how big they are,'' he said. ''They're all trying to find something good to work on.''

And it's not as if he has nothing to do between projects. He is still active in Steppenwolf, which is in its 25th anniversary year and has also spawned such well-known actors as John Malkovich, Joan Allen and John Mahoney. It was the Steppenwolf production of ''True West'' in 1982 featuring Mr. Sinise and Mr. Malkovich that established the company's bold reputation.

Mr. Sinise also directs, and he received a Tony nomination for his direction of ''Buried Child'' on Broadway in 1996.

''Most actors have that insecurity always that it's over or the next job won't come or they'll never work again or they'll never work on something good again or they won't be good anymore, and I have that fear,'' he said. ''That fear drives me to work harder on my acting. I think if I lose that, my acting loses its vitality, its edge, its aggression.''

''It's a defense,'' he continued, ''against mediocrity.''

Photos: Gary Sinise in his dressing room at the Royale Theater, where he opens on Sunday in ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' the play based on Ken Kesey's novel. ''It's a great old story that anyone who's fragile in any area can identify with,'' said Mr. Sinise, who plays R. P. McMurphy. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)(pg. E1); Gary Sinise, fourth from left, in ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.'' (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)(pg. E7)